Re: lynx-dev info pages

[brian j. pardy]

On Wed, 27 Jan 1999, Klaus Weide wrote:

> On Wed, 27 Jan 1999, brian j. pardy wrote:
> 
> > > The whole HTStream mechanism in lynx is already a way to "plug in
> > > filters", but they have to be written in C and be compiled in.
> > 
> > Hmm.  This isn't a project for 2.8.2, and probably not even for 2.9, but
> > is there any way that an interface with some sort of dynamically 
> > loadable module could be hacked in there?  That could be an area to
> > eventually plug-in Javascript if that ever happens, and who knows what
> > else.
> 
> What I was referring to was filters for converting one sort of text
> (as just a stream of bytes) into another, before Lynx does much with
> it.  You seem to be thinking about something that would have to happen
> at a much later stage.

Oh, I parsed you wrong.  I wasn't sure where HTStream was called.

Something could possibly even be done there -- is this where .Z/.gz/.bz2
files are internally decompressed?  It would be nice to be able to specify
what does the decompression outside of the code, to better support new
compression techniques w/o having to hardcode them.

> > > But I don't really understand what this thread is about.  Someone
> > > wants to convert something into anotherthing, but why should that be a
> > > task for Lynx?
> > 
> > The GNU 'info' viewer is abysmal at best, IMO, totally discounting my
> > feelings for GNU.  I've never liked hypertextual documentation (I do
> > much better for comprehension with a straight stream of info), but all
> > of the documentation on (for example) the GNU C library functions are
> > in info.
> 
> Emacs is a reasonable info viewer...

Emacs and I don't get along :)

> > info2html should be enough, though.  But if an ly-info2html.o module 
> > could be yanked in, that'd be neat.
> 
> I assume those packages (I have another one called info2www) must have
> a CGI interface.  So how about trying that under lynxcgi?

Hmm.  That could work, or maybe even a shell script to use as an 
alternate downloader (I use a small perl script to prompt me if I want
to view immediately when download gif/jpg files, for example).

> But that might still produce hypertextual documentation, which you don't
> like. :)

:)

I tend to go on a link-following spree and never return back to the
original document that got me off on the tangent.

> I've actually been thinking about duplicating the Apache API in lynx,
> so that Lynx could load apache modules. :)  But not seriously.
> I mean, except for hack value I don't think there is the slightest
> bit of good reason for binary modules in Lynx.

*pondering a perl-scriptable lynx-session*  

Hmmmm.

It could still be a fun extra patch to have around and not included in
the src distribution.

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